Universals in facial expression

More than anything though, what shapes a child's cognitive ability to detect facial expression is being exposed to it from the time of birth. The more an infant is exposed to different faces and expressions, the more able they are to recognize these emotions and then mimic them for themselves.

Infants are exposed to an array of emotional expressions from birth, and evidence indicates that they imitate some facial expressions and gestures e. A person's face, especially their eyes, creates the most obvious and immediate cues that lead to the formation of impressions. A person's eyes reveal much about how they are feeling, or what they are thinking. Blink rate can reveal how nervous or at ease a person may be.

Research by Boston College professor Joe Tecce suggests that stress levels are revealed by blink rates. He supports his data with statistics on the relation between the blink rates of presidential candidates and their success in their races. Tecce claims that the faster blinker in the presidential debates has lost every election since Nervousness can also be measured by examining each candidates' perspiration, eye contact and stiffness. Within their first year, Infants learn rapidly that the looking behaviors of others conveys significant information.

Infants prefer to look at faces that engage them in mutual gaze and that, from an early age, healthy babies show enhanced neural processing of direct gaze. Eye contact is another major aspect of facial communication. Some have hypothesized that this is due to infancy, as humans are one of the few mammals who maintain regular eye contact with their mother while nursing.

It regulates conversations, shows interest or involvement, and establishes a connection with others. But different cultures have different rules for eye contact. Certain Asian cultures can perceive direct eye contact as a way to signal competitiveness, which in many situations may prove to be inappropriate. Others lower their eyes to signal respect, and similarly eye contact is avoided in Nigeria; [16] however, in western cultures this could be misinterpreted as lacking self-confidence.

Even beyond the idea of eye contact, eyes communicate more data than a person even consciously expresses. Pupil dilation is a significant cue to a level of excitement, pleasure, or attraction. Dilated pupils indicate greater affection or attraction, while constricted pupils send a colder signal. Facial expression is used in sign languages to convey specific meanings. Lowered eyebrows are used for wh-word questions.

Facial expression is also used in sign languages to show adverbs and adjectives such as distance or size: It can also show the manner in which something is done, such as carelessly or routinely. The belief in the evolutionary basis of these kinds of facial expressions can be traced back to Darwin 's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Reviews of the universality hypothesis have been both supportive [19] [20] and critical.

Ekman 's work on facial expressions had its starting point in the work of psychologist Silvan Tomkins. Ekman showed that facial expressions of emotion are not culturally determined, but universal across human cultures. To demonstrate his universality hypothesis, Ekman ran a test on a group of the South Fore people of New Guinea , a pre-industrial culture that was isolated from the West. The experiment participants were told brief stories about emotional events happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust.

After each story, they were asked to select the matching facial expression from an array of three faces.

Children selected from an array of only two faces, and their results were similar to the adults'. Subsequent cross-cultural studies found similar results. Both sides of this debate agree that the face expresses emotion. The controversy surrounds the uncertainty about what specific emotional information is read from a facial expression. Opponents of the universality hypothesis believe that more general information is pieced together with other contextual information in order to determine how a person feels. One argument against the evidence presented in support of the universality hypothesis is that the method typically used to demonstrate universality inflates recognition scores.

The three main factors are the following:. Darwin argued that the expression of emotions has evolved in humans from animal ancestors, who would have used similar methods of expression. Darwin believed that expressions were unlearned and innate in human nature and were therefore evolutionarily significant for survival. He compiled supporting evidence from his research on different cultures, on infants, and in other animal species.

Cross-cultural studies had shown that there are similarities in the way emotions are expressed across diverse cultures, but studies have even shown that there are similarities between species in how emotions are expressed. Research has shown that chimpanzees are able to communicate many of the same facial expressions as humans through the complex movements of the facial muscles. In fact, the facial cues were so similar that Ekman's Facial Action Coding System could be applied to the chimps in evaluating their expressions.

Similarly, Darwin observed that infants' method of expression for certain emotions was instinctive, as they were able to display emotional expressions they had not themselves yet witnessed. These similarities in morphology and movement are important for the correct interpretation of an emotion.

He looked at the functions of facial expression in terms of the utility of expression in the life of the animal and in terms of specific expressions within species. Darwin deduced that some animals communicated feelings of different emotional states with specific facial expressions. He further concluded that this communication was important for the survival of animals in group-dwelling species; the skill to effectively communicate or interpret another animal's feelings and behaviors would be a principal trait in naturally fit species.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. July Learn how and when to remove this template message. Facial Expression of Emotion: From Theory to Application.

Got a tip?

Human facial expression 1 ed. The psychology of facial expression 1 ed. H; Yoshikawa, Sakiko American Psychological Association, Inc. Physiology of behavior 10th ed. Current Opinion in Neurobiology. Journal of Cognitive Psychology. The Psychology of Emotions: The Allure of Human Face. In the Company of Others: An Introduction to Communication. They found strong cross-cultural agreement in the labeling of those expressions. Ekman closed the loophole arising from the possibility that observing mass media might account for cross-cultural agreement by studying people in a Stone Age culture in New Guinea who had seen few if any outsiders and no media portrayals of emotion.

These preliterate people also recognized the same emotions when shown the Darwin-Tomkins set.

Are Facial Expressions Universal?

The capacity for humans in radically different cultures to label facial expressions with terms from a list of emotion terms has been replicated nearly times. Barrett is right to ask whether individuals in radically different cultures provide similar interpretations of facial expressions if allowed to describe the expressions on their own terms rather than having to pick from a list of emotion terms.

Haidt and Keltner did such a study, comparing the free responses to the Darwin-Tomkins set of expressions and some other expressions with the responses of people in rural India and the U. Once again, the findings of universality were clear-cut, and evidence of universality in the expression of embarrassment was also found.

The evidence on the judgment of the Darwin-Tomkins facial expressions is robust; so, we suppose, is Barrett's evidence for the expressions not covered in the Darwin-Tomkins set. She has missed that point, not recognizing the difference between unselected and theoretically selected facial expressions. Barrett also ignores two other very powerful data sets that don't involve showing portrayals of facial expressions to people.

Instead, what people actually do, spontaneous facial expressions, is measured in numerous distinct emotional contexts. Ekman and Friesen published what might be the first such study, comparing the spontaneous facial expressions shown by Japanese and American subjects in a private and public setting, finding universal facial expressions -- the Darwin-Tomkins set -- in private, and different expressions in public. Since then, over studies have been published measuring spontaneous facial expressions, enough to justify two volumes by Oxford University Press reprinting the articles of dozens of scientists.

Another large body of research has established different patterns of physiology -- in bodily changes generated by the activity of the autonomic nervous system ANS , and in brain activity -- coinciding with the appearance of the Darwin-Tomkins set of facial expressions.